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Abstract:

In a research that explores the possibilities for transit-oriented development in the peri-urban landscape of Flanders (Belgium), the integration of the hydrological system and the landscape morphology into the definition of a new regional light rail network, is explored. Integrating the linear structure of river trajectories with infrastructural logics in both the natural and man-made landscape, creates a dynamic for future spatial developments and frames these into an infrastructural based landscape strategy. The research-by-design puts an emphasis on the spatial potential of bundling landscape structures with public transport infrastructures as a guiding principle for urban development. This strategy, which seeks for recurrent design approaches, is tested on the region of Klein-Brabant, situated at the heart of Flanders. Dealing with a densely urbanized and fine-grained territory, the capacity for production of new landscapes is particularly limited on a scale that exceeds local interventions. The vocabulary of infrastructure design intervenes in both the built environment and the open space, which are strongly interwoven in the dispersed urban landscape. Thus infrastructure, as the carrier of fluxes and consequential dynamics, has the potential to serve as a backbone for spatial transformation.